2019: The Year in Images from Coda Story
At Coda we aim to cover global crises in ways that emphasize the human side of the story, which is not always easy for subjects like Disinformation and Authoritarian Tech.
I see our visual work as a tool to help achieve this objective not just intellectually, but also on a more visceral, experiential level, as this often leads to deeper and more impactful engagement.
But the challenge of telling Coda stories visually is often formidable, especially when so many stories about disinfo and authoritarian tech involve people or organizations that are attempting to obfuscate, misdirect, and limit visibility. How do you tell a story visually that is designed to be invisible?
To address this challenge we rely on a diverse set of visual tools: from illustration and animation, to video, gifs, photography, interactive web platforms, and whatever new formats we can experiment with to optimize the impact of our reporting.
Here’s a roundup of Coda’s visual work from 2019 that I’m most proud of:
In July and August of this year Coda worked with photographer Tako Robakidze on “Creeping Borders,” a short multimedia piece about Russia’s occupation of Georgia’s Tskhinvali region. Since 2008 Russia has been quietly moving the occupation line a few meters at a time deeper into Georgia and arresting anyone they find on Russian-held territory. Tako spent more than a year photographing Georgians residing near the occupation line –– people who live in fear that one day they might go to sleep in their native Georgia and wake up on Russian-occupied land. I loved working with Tako on this piece, which was funded in part through a grant from the Magnum Foundation, and it’s a great example of what photography can be when the artist has time to immerse herself in the community over a long period of time. If you like the piece, be sure to check out our interview with Tako about the making of the project.
2. “Generation Gulag”
The Russian government is rewriting the history the Gulag, but the eyewitnesses of Soviet authoritarianism have a different story. Coda’s documentary project “Generation Gulag” features short documentaries about those who experienced the Gulag firsthand –– the arrests, the imprisonment, the exile, and the executions –– and what this history means for Russia today. Stay tuned for the project launch in January 2020.
3. Ukraine’s War
2019 marked the fifth year of war in Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have occupied a large territory in eastern Ukraine known as Donbass. Photographer Benas Gerdziunas went to Donbass to photograph the state of the conflict today in the town of Zolote, which has been perched on the front lines of this conflict since it began. Home to daily shelling and divided loyalties, and largely cut off from the world, Zolote is a de facto exclusion zone where the information vacuum creates an echo chamber with daily consequences in people’s lives.
4. Authoritarian Tech
Modern technology was supposed to end dictatorship. But will it end democracy instead? In February 2019 Coda Story launched a new channel –– Authoritarian Tech –– that investigates the technology governments use to advance authoritarian agendas. We produced this trailer to mark the launch.
Joseph Stalin is back in vogue: across Russia and its neighboring countries it’s almost as fashionable to mourn him as it is to loath him. Fueled by the Kremlin’s drive to rewrite history and the surprising endurance of Soviet nostalgia, Stalin is suddenly at the center of the struggle for national identity across the post-Soviet bloc. And nowhere does the narrative surrounding his legacy play out more publicly than in the tyrant’s native country Georgia, where pro-European and pro-Russian groups battle for control over the country’s future. Coda produced this documentary film as part of its ongoing coverage of Russian disinformation.
6. Coda’s illustration and animation
Looking into 2020, I’m already very excited about the stories we have in the pipeline. See you next year!
